Project Tripod aims to eliminate tripods for time lapses, exclusive to Windows Phone

The majority of the crew here at Windows Phone Central digs photography. Between our DSLRs and smartphones we’re all about wrangling photons. And we’re not alone, a lot of you are into photography too. If you count yourself among the photography loving crowd you should sign up to join the beta of Project Tripod, an exclusive app coming to Windows Phone first.

So what is Project Tripod? Besides a really genius app? Project Tripod is an app coming to Windows Phone that will be part virtual tripod and part social photography. When you want to take a time lapse you typically need a tripod and a lot of time. Project Tripod will do away with the need of a tripod by letting you come back to and capture the same picture over and over and over again. Topping it off, you can share your tripod so others can add images to your set. Below you’ll see a long time lapse that was taken over a period of a few months on a smartphone, with a phone and no physical tripod.

Project Tripod is coming out of the mobile app accelerator program managed by Aalto University in Espoo, Finland – AppCampus. You’ll remember this as the joint venture between Microsoft and Nokia to help boost app development for the Windows Phone platform. Potential entrepreneurs and startups can get up to 70,000 Euros (about $91,942 USD) to aid in development of their app. Unlike some accelerator programs, Microsoft and Nokia don’t take a stake in the company. Instead, apps accepted and awarded the money will be exclusive in the Windows Phone Store or Nokia Collection for 90 days. After that the app can jump to competing platforms like iOS, Android, or BlackBerry.

Project Tripod World Map

Project Tripod will let users find tripods all over and add to them.

Project Tripod in particular was awarded a cool $69,500 in funding to get the app off the ground and running. Although, it sounds like Project Tripod is going to be more than just an app. Consider making a tripod of the Golden Gate bridge and slowly having other Windows Phone users (and someday iPhone and Android users) adding to the time lapse. There’s going to need to be some infrastructure powering all these different platforms.

Project Tripod for Windows Phone

The idea is somewhat simple, but hasn’t really been done before on a scale like this. It’s really cool that Windows Phone will have the app exclusive from iOS or Android for at least three months. If you want to get in on the action you should sign up for the beta. It hasn’t started yet, but Project Tripod is taking contact info for anyone who wishes to join a beta in the future. You'll find the sign up at the source link below.

I can’t wait to start seeing all these crowd sourced images. From the perspective of a historian it will be super interesting to see how a place changes through the seasons and over time. Anybody interested by this project?

Source: Project Tripod, Via: The Nokia Blog, StartUp Smart

Sam Sabri